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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - EA’s “Unprecedented Partnership” with Nintendo and Other Fairy Tales...

Fifa is such an amazing game. That's all.



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cbarroso09 said:
Arcturus said:
cbarroso09 said:

 

Madden is one of the biggest sports IP’s in the industry today, along with NCAA Football and FIFA, yet EA isn’t developing a version for the Wii U. We have no official word on NCAA and FIFA yet, but all signs are pointing to those not arriving on Nintendo’s console either. If you have several multi-million dollar franchises, isn’t releasing them on everything available the smart thing to do? Especially if you have a strong partnership with one of the oldest gaming companies still in existence? Something here strikes me as…..odd.

Nope.

yes


Hmm. I get the feeling people genuinley don't understand how companies think these days.

People seem to think aslong as a big company profits they are fine. Why not release games on Wii U, they would still turn a profit even with just few sales. Why cancel Dead Space why not do stuff that turns a profit even if its small, a profit is a profit afterall.

 

Whats the job of a CEO ? Keeping the Stockholders happy and make them money. But how do they do that ? By turning a profit efficently. Getting the most for the least possible amount of work. Big Companies don't like to waste their human assets time by working on less profitable projects. They won't use their time to do anything at all that makes less profit than other things they could be doing. Porting games to Wii U is an investment for the bigger companies atm even if they get a guaranteed profit by doing it.

 

Even outsourcing a port doesn't work if the profit is not big enough to waste a skilled studios time. 

 

The only way for Nintendo to get  ports right now  would be if they port it for free and give the profits to the IP holder. But they can work on more profitable stuff too. EAs unprecedented partnership was probably said with much bigger sales in mind.



Scoobes said:
Viper1 said:
Excellent article, Ricard,

To further raise ire with the technical director and the Frostbite 3 engine, their issue seems to stem from the clock rate the Wii U's CPU. Similar to how the Dynasty Warriors developer had a problem with the CPU clock.

What makes me wonder is how they plan to port the Frostbite 3 engine over to the PS4 and Next X given that they too have lower clock speeds than the current HD consoles (both rated at 3.2 Ghz)?

Clock speed has been THE main issue for any developer that has complained about the Wii U's CPU or performance or power, etc... Yet that same clock speed issue is staring them in the face for ALL next generation consoles.

They can easily come up with reasons/excuses; X86 architecture, more cores/threads available, the extra 500(?)MHz making all the difference etc.

Sadly, that's likely what they'll say.  Which won't fly for any of us that understand the technology.

curl-6 said:

The guy who unveiled the Wii U's CPU speed stated that it should "win big on IPC (Instructions Per Cycle) for most code" compared to the PS3/360 CPUs, and Criterion stated that "while it is a lower clock speed, it punches above it's weight in a lot of other areas," and that comparing it to Cell/Xenon (PS3/360's CPUs) based on clockspeed was "apples to oranges."

Espresso may be slower clocked, and have less hardware threads, but it has advantages of its own; a shorter pipeline which means less processing time is lost if it makes a mistake, an audio DSP to handle sound so the CPU doesn't have to, (apparently sound can take up a whole core on Xenon) a GPGPU to further take the strain off Espresso, out-of-order execution compared to Xenon/Cell's in-order execution, and three times as much L2 cache as Xenon.

It's not as weak as it's made out to be.

Indeed.  But that doesn't fit the narrative of many.  Including many developers/publishers it seems.

Cj2i3 said:

Whatever Nintendo and EA's relationship is at the end of the day they both would like to make a profit. I don't know how much it costs to a port game to the Wii-U but if EA lost money on porting ME3 and they feel that porting games later down the line will only lose them money than so be it. Obviously this is all assumption for all I know ME3 U was a massive success.

As for Ubisoft I feel they are onboard with the Wii U, because they may lose money on a few ports early on but later down the road when Wii U owners start getting accustomed to AC, maybe Far Cry, Watch Dogs they may be more likely to purchase them down the line. But I'd rather not speculate, just this time.

So the lose now make profit later model is OK for Ubi but not EA?

I'd also like to point out that EA will lose money on launch titles from all consoles.   Launch titles as a loss have been the reality since the advent of 3rd parties.

I'd also like to point out that Ubisoft stated that it cost about $1.3 million to port a game to the Wii U.   At a $20 profit per title, they only need to sell about 65,000 copies to make the investment worth it.  If EA can't do the same, no wonder they hemorrhage money so badly.



The rEVOLution is not being televised

Soundwave said:
curl-6 said:
Soundwave said:
curl-6 said:
Soundwave said:


EA is hardly going to be the only company that treats the Wii U like garbage.

If Nintendo wanted third party support then they should've just basically let third parties approve the hardware. I mean who cares, the EAD teams will make a great game even if you put a gun to their head and forced them to work on a 25 year old Sega Genesis chipset.

Making a chipset the "Nintendo way" = no third party support. That's all there is to it, these other companies don't have the time to waste on some experimental platform, either bring a modern console to the market or get lost, there's 140 million PS3/360s already out there for developers to make money off of if they want a chipset that performs like it's from 2006.

This isn't about "making friends", this is just a business. Nintendo is irrelevant enough to a lot of third parties that simply ignoring Nintendo is a very viable option when time/cost investments are factored into the equation. If Nintendo wanted to change that, they should've made a different type of hardware system. Period.

They made the Gamecube chipset modern for third parties and that got great third party support... oh wait, it was snubbed too.

If you invest in an audience early on, you build a base for yourself for future sales. Wii U represents a potential base; devs aren't investing in it, and as a result they're leaving potential profit on the table. Porting to Wii U well isn't that expensive.


The GameCube wasn't snubbed by third parties. It had a lot of support including by EA themselves (NBA Street, sports games, SSX, Lord of the Rings, etc.).

It had Resident Evil exclusivity and other exclusives from Namco, Sega, and Capcom and lots of big multi-plat titles like Prince of Persia, Beyond Good & Evil, 007 Nightfire, Timesplitters 2, Soul Calibur 2, etc.

It didn't get the GTA games or Final Fantasy, but Sony was smart enough to lock those up and had leverage over publishers because they had such a huge headstart on Nintendo/Microsoft (and actually took advantage of it).

It's not the fault of third parties that Nintendo opted to corner themselves into a kiddy reputation with the look of the console and cell-shading Zelda or that Nintendo made some odd choices with their core franchises which led to low hardware sales. That's all on Nintendo. It's not a third parties job to brand and market a console, that's on the hardware maker.

Third parties don't have time for "potential" in today's business, games cost more than ever to make, they have limited resources and have to pick which platforms are going to bring them back the best returns.

Instead of making a balanced, modern console that was easy for third parties to develop their next-gen engines on and taking advantage of a year head start, Nintendo opted to (once again) bet everything on a controller gimmick, only this time it isn't taking off with casuals at all. That's just the law of averages evening out, when you gamble on miracles, eventually you will get burned.

Sony didn't "lock up" GTA, it was on Xbox too, but not Gamecube.

And third parties lose nothing by adding Wii U while keeping 360 and PS3. Porting isn't expensive.


Microsoft paid to get it on XBox and it was a good while after the PS2 versions.

It still takes staff resources to port a game, the amount of staff it takes to port 4-5 Wii U EA games could probably be pooled together to work on an original PS4/720 or PS3/360 project, which probably would have a better chance of selling if it breaks out. The amount of staff/money it takes to port one game, not a big deal, but when you're talking porting each iteration of Battlefield + Need for Speed + FIFA + Madden NFL + Tiger Woods + Star Wars, that likely is getting into a pool of about 100+ people that are needed.

EA's franchises on the Wii/Wii U ... really not a good match, the Wii brand is more about casuals and kids, EA relies more on jock gamers (nothing wrong with this) and male teenagers/college kids. That's just their audience, and that type of audience tends to like to Sony/MS' hardware/marketing philosphy better than Nintendo.

Maybe they will port some of the Star Wars games (maybe not the Frostbyte engine ones, but there might be some more family-centric Star Wars games).

An "original" project? This is EA we're talking about, they're a franchise factory.

EA's games have seen modest success on Nintendo systems; not as much as PS3/360, but enough to justify ports. At this point, it's probably too late, bridges have been burnt, but had they released Mass Effect Trilogy at Wii U's launch instead of just 3, and continued support with their main games, they could have themselves an extra audience to pinch pennies from.



Honestly stopped reading when this guy presented an insane and unsubstantiated rumor from reddit as plausible.



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JEMC said:
Osc89 said:
Zero999 said:
Osc89 said:
Well if this is what happened, Nintendo really messed up. Why would they go far enough down this Origin road to make EA start planning around it, then just pull out? it's like the whole SNES-CD thing over again; why can't they get on with anybody?

i think the most probable scenerio is EA demanding this origin thing AFTER those partnership announcements, then nintendo refused.

snes-cd is another story.

It seems odd that a company like EA would think there was a good chance of Origin going on the Wii U without any indication from Nintendo. Still I'm glad Nintendo made the right choice in the end, I just wish they had kept their distance so as not to cause these problems in the first place. I mean EA doesn't have this awful reputation for no reason.

What could have happened is that Nintendo went to EA to ask for help/tips for their new network given that EA has a lot of experience with online gaming from a big variety of games, from FIFA to Battlefield to Burnout. From here come sthe "unprecedent partnership" of E3 2011.

Then the big heads of EA could think "why help them? Why don't we offer our own infrastructure? They sure will say yes" and when Nintendo said "No, thanks" they overreacted. And are still pissed off.

Of course the sales of both the console and the few EA games on it are part of this story, but if Warner Bros (which is not as big as EA) have decided to launch Batman Origins on WiiU after Arkham City sold only 140k copies, there's no excuse for EA for not supporting.

The article says they had this "unprecedented partnership" from E3 2011 until somewhere between June and September of the following year. EA wouldn't have done this (as well as giving them free advice, lots of support and going on stage at E3) for no reason. They must have believed Origin was going on the Wii U, but how could EA think Origin was going on the Wii U for over a year unless Nintendo said it was? Nintendo must have had a deal prepared, or were at the very least leading EA on.



PSN: Osc89

NNID: Oscar89

Osc89 said:

The article says they had this "unprecedented partnership" from E3 2011 until somewhere between June and September of the following year. EA wouldn't have done this (as well as giving them free advice, lots of support and going on stage at E3) for no reason. They must have believed Origin was going on the Wii U, but how could EA think Origin was going on the Wii U for over a year unless Nintendo said it was? Nintendo must have had a deal prepared, or were at the very least leading EA on.

I don't pretend to know what went on, but no way is this on Nintendo. Nintendo would never ever give any outside party such control over one of their products, or even alluded to it being a possibility. They never done that and they weren't going to start now.

If EA really did believe they would get a foot in somehow, they were seriously kidding themselves.



pokoko said:
Honestly stopped reading when this guy presented an insane and unsubstantiated rumor from reddit as plausible.

It's better than the lunacy that suggests that EA is perfectly justified in all of this.



Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.

S.Peelman said:
Osc89 said:

The article says they had this "unprecedented partnership" from E3 2011 until somewhere between June and September of the following year. EA wouldn't have done this (as well as giving them free advice, lots of support and going on stage at E3) for no reason. They must have believed Origin was going on the Wii U, but how could EA think Origin was going on the Wii U for over a year unless Nintendo said it was? Nintendo must have had a deal prepared, or were at the very least leading EA on.

I don't pretend to know what went on, but no way is this on Nintendo. Nintendo would never ever give any outside party such control over one of their products, or even alluded to it being a possibility. They never done that and they weren't going to start now.

If EA really did believe they would get a foot in somehow, they were seriously kidding themselves.

What about the SNES-CD? When Nintendo let Sony produce the CD add-on for the SNES and produce a Sony console compatible with SNES cartridges the deal was all in place. They even let Sony announce the console before revealing their Philips partnership, so they definitely aren't above leading a company on.



PSN: Osc89

NNID: Oscar89

It's amusing seeing people blatantly consider 3rd party's who aren't developing on Wii u as garbage and automatically get blamed by its funny fans...how about turning that hate to the company that made this happen, dare I say it......Nintendo!